Download a ten-page extract from that storyboard (Acrobat PDF file, 588kb).

The following text introduced Jeannie Baker's storyboard proposal.

My art medium is a type of collage, with built up textures and relief and a captured perspective.

As it has evolved to date, my medium works (in my opinion) very well in print and especially well in film.

I've only had one film to test this and am therefore, extremely keen to pursue this further with making another film.

This particular project (as with my earlier film project) has been designed to work in three ways:

1. A ten minute film (35mm) designed for the theatre and television screen, to be distributed internationally.
2. A picture book to be distributed internationally: Random House, Australia; Greenwillow Books, USA; Julia MacRae Books, UK
3. A travelling exhibition of the original collage constructions (refer to enclosed catalogues of my last two travelling exhibitions).

The film and book are to be finished to coincide with the opening of the first exhibition (June 1995).

Each part of the project should reinforce the other. This was my experience with my previous multimedia project, Where the Forest Meets the Sea.

The film shows the ancient Australian landscape, isolated from the rest of the world, until Europeans arrived here about two hundred years ago.

Several generations later, a European woman is seen creating a garden of her favourite plants from the other side of the world: in particular, we see her planting Rosy Dock, easily distinguished by its beautiful bright red seedpods. We see the seeds distributed throughout the area by the wind and watch as the plant increasingly grows wild in the landscape outside the garden.

There is a flood and we move with the floodwaters to the river's end.

With the waters, the desert quickly explodes with life. Insects, plants and animals multiply.

We notice several Rosy Dock plants among the plant species that have come to life.

The waters soon evaporate; most of the plants and animals disappear with them.

More cycles of rain and drought and duststorms blowing seeds are indicated.

The story closes with a scene of introduced animals (rabbits) moving amongst Rosy Dock plants which are totally smothering the landscape from foreground to horizon: with the implication that the wind will continue to blow seeds and so increasingly carry this plant into new territory.

The images for this project are partly completed and are artwork pieces in themselves, but are built to facilitate filming.

The collages work extremely well on film. My understanding of this success is that the camera is able to capture the perspective so that the image has real depth while it is still apparent that the artwork is basically two dimensional. So the feature background work has depth, detail, texture and an intriguing aesthetic style. The artwork has proved to work well in these ways, even when focusing in on small detials.

The collages would be the background and will work with the animated characters and desert plants and creatures to provide the story and moving focus. The animated elements would involve various techniques but all would have a strong relief and textural quality as in the background artwork.

The artwork would be filmed using a multiplane technique to enhance the relief quality in the collage and facilitate a range of lighting effects.